I guess the best and most used image zoom plugin for Magento is Magic Zoom. Today I had to optimise the Magic Zoom functionality so that it works nicely on mobile devices. They say that the plugin is responsive out of the box, although I do not really know what exactly is responsive – I definitely had issues on mobile devices. In any case, the quick and awesome support helped me with my problem and told me that they release a new version with „much more improved behavior on mobile device“ next month.
Avantages of Introducing a VCS and Modman for Customers
So you receive a Magento request from a new customer. Great! You have a first look at the server. So far so good! You quickly realise that there is no version control system (VCS) and no separation of customisations and core code. DAMN IT!!! Q(/%LJx§“?8SA?!(&%!!! I can of course only tell from my experiences, but I have the impression that this problem is absolutely common and happens with shops of any size. So how do you convince your new potential customer to initially spend a fair amount of money to just bring his project technically on a good basis? He does not have any direct advantages from it. But which advantages can you promise anyway, which may convince him? Avantages of Introducing a VCS and Modman for Customers weiterlesen
Interview with Cloudways
The Magento Community Manager of Cloudways, Wajid Hussain, asked me to give an interview some time ago. I was of course very thankful and felt honoured, so that I certainly agreed. The topics of the interview are widespread: We talk about different shop systems, Magento extensions, Magento customisations, Magento 2 and a few other things. Interview with Cloudways weiterlesen
Magento Certified Frontend Developer
After my good experiences with the Magento Certified Solution Specialist certification, I was brave enough to go one step further: To take the Magento Certified Frontend Developer exam. The exam is definitely more challenging than the solution specialist exam, but it is absolutely doable if you know Magento’s frontend part. You want to know how you can prepare yourself? You want to know how my experiences were? Read on! Magento Certified Frontend Developer weiterlesen
Magento 1.9 Infinite Theme Inheritance: Child CSS Not Rendered Last
So after reading my post about hickups with the infinite theme inheritance feature in Magento 1.9 you decide to give it a try. You want to use the rwd/default theme as a base and just add some new fancy CSS, so that the site is in accordance with your corporate design. But then you realise that your CSS file is rendered as the first CSS file, so that all your changes are overridden by the CSS files of the parent theme. Why is this the case? How can you solve this? Read on. Magento 1.9 Infinite Theme Inheritance: Child CSS Not Rendered Last weiterlesen
Magento 1.9 Infinite Theme Inheritance Hickups
In this post, I will summarise my experiences with Magento’s „new“ infinite theme inheritance feature. It is not really new any more, because it was introduced with Magento 1.9, which is available for quite some time now. But since I now had the possibility to have a closer look at it, I encountered two „hickups“ of this system, which I present in this post. Replace hickup with problem, bug, weird behaviour or whatever you like 🙂 There may be some solutions, too, so keep on reading!
Magento 1.9 Infinite Theme Inheritance Hickups weiterlesen
Master Thesis: Tool Support for Reactive Programming
A few months ago, I wrote an introductory post about reactive programming and shortly discussed whether it can be seen as THE new programming paradigm. I wrote my master thesis about reactive programming and – more specifically – about debugging tool support for it. Unfortunately, there is currently no tool support for it at all. In my thesis, I developed a first system which provides a usable debugging tool for reactive programming. The system is further developed at TU Darmstadt and will probably be released at a subsequent date. If you follow my supervisor Guido Salvaneschi and especially his GitHub account, you should witness the release. If you are already interested, you can download my written thesis at the end of this article. But first of all, have a look at the official abstract of my thesis:
Master Thesis: Tool Support for Reactive Programming weiterlesen
Magento Mega Menu Extension Comparison
Magento’s default top menu is rather static and not customisable at all. It simply shows all the categories defined in the administration area. Many shop owners of course want to customise the top menu by themselves: They want to change the hierarchy of the menu entries; they want to add links to specific category pages where filters are activated; they want to feature certain products directly in the menu; they want to add a contact form to it etc. If your customer wants something like this and you are searching for a suitable menu extension for Magento, read on.
Magento Certified Solution Specialist
For a long time, I was unsure if it is worth the money to do a certification. But since I won a voucher for a certification long time ago, I of course decided to do it at some time. The voucher expired at the end of last year, so I quickly had to take the certification between Christmas and New Year. Since I had nearly no time to learn, I decided to take the easiest one first 🙂 To make a long story short, I am now a Magento Cerftified Solution Specialist.
Reactive Programming – the New Programming Paradigm?
I am on the last lap of my master thesis, which has the nice title „Tool Support for Reactive Programming“. But what exactly is reactive programming (RP)? It basically just describes systems which are reactive in the sense that they directly adapt to changing inputs or a changing environment in general. If an input value changes, reactive systems directly re-compute the depending output values, so that the outputs always reflect the current inputs. Informally, one can compare RP with spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel. If a value in a cell is changed, all values which depend on that cell are directly re-computed and updated. That is pretty much the idea behind RP. Reactive Programming – the New Programming Paradigm? weiterlesen